Aliveom and our team of credible and talented web promotion and design experts put their minds and heart into every project we undertake. This has left us with a pleasing track record of bringing the best in web avenues and taking the online businesses of our clients to soaring heights.

Month: April 2016

For the past several years business owners have been facing the issue of their listing being reported as “Permanently Closed”. This problem is more with ventures that have relocated to a new address and rather than directing the visitors to the new address, the old business website often displays the “Permanently Closed” label. Google has long before accepted the fact that this issue is posing a serious problem for business owners and has even apologized for the same while promising to fix it. However, not much was done by the technology giant to rectify the problem until quite recently.

How This Status Affects Businesses

In the modern times, internet has become the preferred shopping destination for most people, as it is not only a lot more convenient but also helps save time. So when an online shopper visits a website that is labeled as permanently closed, he/she is most likely to move on the next best website offering similar products. In addition people have also claimed that, since it is extremely easy to mark the business with this specific label in Google Places, it is quite common for competing websites to use this tool to divert traffic from a more popular site. Most importantly it affects the goodwill and brand value of the business as clients find it hard to trust an organization that shuts down all of a sudden for no apparent reason.

All the while, the businesses in question generally have absolutely no idea about why their client traffic is suddenly ebbing. This is because Google does not send any notification to the business about the status of their old website. In view of the these facts, it is quite obvious that having a “Permanently Closed” status displayed at the old website address can cost a business drearily, which is why most online ventures are quite vary of this problem cropping up in case they shift their website.

Resolving The Issue

Even though Google has taken a long time to respond to this issue, it has been working towards finding a solution to this problem for the past several months. In fact a majority of business owners are unaware of the fact that there a feature in Google Maps, named, “Moved”, which helps in resolving this problem in an effective manner. Another method of solving the problem is for the businesses to get their new address verified in Google My Business listings and request for the old location to be marked as moved.

Getting the old listing marked as moves ensures that it does not appear in Google search or Google Maps. Moreover, Google updates the old location URL on Google Maps to a “302 HTTP status code”, which automatically redirects the users to the new address. When the old address is marked as “Moved”, the reviews from the site are automatically transferred to the new address to ensure that no data is lost.

Currently, Google is trying to make it possible for business owners to perform all these actions by editing their business status on Google Maps. As of now the business owners need to contact the Google My Business support for any changes.